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Annie/Development
Annie's Designers |gameplay = |narrative = |artwork = Gabriel Yeganyan Lilit 'L i L i t a' Hayrapetyan Ke 'Keboom' Swaab Oskar Vega Horace Hsu Steve Zheng |visual = Albert Carranza James Ku Seung 'kse' Eun Kim Jungah Lee Gabriel Yeganyan Jonboy Meyers Lilit 'L i L i t a' Hayrapetyan Ke 'Keboom' Swaab Kevin Leroy Baldi Konijn |voice = Cristina Milizia |Japanese Voice Actor}} |conceptcredit = Augie Pagan }} Visual Upgrade: Annie, the Dark Child By NeeksNaman Visual Upgrade: Annie, the Dark Child Hide your combustibles! herself is receiving a visual upgrade in an upcoming patch, and will soon be taking names and melting faces more brilliantly than ever before. This update brings a brand new model as well as improved textures, sounds, spell effects and voice over to Annie and all of her skins. But the pain doesn't end there, because is also badder and more bear-like than you've ever seen him. The same care and attention has turned everyone's favorite ursine firebrand into a high-def, rampaging monstrosity, ready to scorch Annie's foes across the Fields of Justice. The Art of Annie As one of the first champions we created for League, Annie’s combination of character traits—lovable and scary, cute and twisted—helped set the tone for the diversity of themes we wanted our universe to explore. Annie is the flagship character for a world where archetypes and expectations can be turned on their heads, and anything, no matter how seemingly sweet, can be dangerous. In order to make Annie’s in-game model fit proportionately with juggernauts like Garen and Sion, we decided to give her a hyper-stylized look that emphasizes her childlike features. We made her head, hands, and feet huge, foregoing realism and embracing her larger-than-life characteristics. She is, after all, a fire-wielding little girl with a giant, magical bear.The Art of Annie The Art of Annie: OriginsThe Art of Annie: Origins By Dyquill : The devs of ANNIE: Origins talk the tech behind her hand-painted look and one-of-a-kind fire. If you had walked to the farthest, darkest corner of Riot Games about a year ago, chances are you would have come across a small group of artists huddled together in dim lighting and deep discussion about how to make fire look like paint. The “Annie team” spent a lot of time like that, debating among themselves while wallpapering their part of the building with references and sketches—a madcap studio-within-a-studio hellbent on discovering the perfect method and medium for what was to be Annie’s origin story. But the spark that started it all occurred long before there was ever a team. ;Ignition It was 2012, and the first animated login screens appeared in the League client. These 2D graphics, carefully distorted to imitate motion, were an immediate hit with players and became a regular part of every new champion release. Seeing the massive popularity of “mographs” like Diana’s, one art director asked a deceptively simple question: What would one of these looping login screens look like as a long-form, animated story? It was an intriguing idea, but there was a problem: The motion graphic artists at Riot used completely different technology and techniques than traditionally trained 2D animators. Creating a multi-minute animation would require an entirely new approach to making mographs, one that could extend far beyond the standard single looping shot. It took some time to find a team wildly enthusiastic enough to attempt something no one at Riot (or maybe anywhere) knew how to do. It took more time to convince Riot—and themselves— that they could actually pull it off. But by the end, they didn’t just learn a new way to make mograph animations. They invented one. ;Adding more to Annie But first, they had to pick a champ. “Originally, we were gonna do a Zed piece, and then we were thinking about a Miss Fortune one,” says director Anthony “ RiotPastaBomb” Possobon. “But other teams were already working on some ideas for those champs. We wanted to do something with a champion that no one else was really interested in so we wouldn’t overlap with other projects.” When RiotPastaBomb and the motion graphics team began reviewing the League roster for a main character, Annie wasn’t perceived as a compelling protagonist. She’d made an appearance in a cinematic before, but to many Rioters she wasn’t a major character in the world of Runeterra. Her story was just too simple. “She was an evil girl, and that’s it,” says RiotPastaBomb. The team began thinking about how Annie might discover her powers—the initial sparks of a personality equal parts precocious and psychopathic. After a few drafts, they had an outline of Annie’s origin story that would deepen her character and hopefully wow players in a way her backstory never really had before. “We put together a storyboard, then turned it into an animatic with subtitles, using ‘Orb of Winter’ as the backing track to give a sense of the mood,” RiotPastaBomb recalls. “And we got the green light to keep going.” ;An illuminating Exploration The team officially began the project by exploring the style and feel they wanted with a mood board, a collection of visual references for everything from shapes and colors to the overall tone and core emotions. “At first, it’s everything, a ton of just looking for inspiration. Sometimes we use references not even related to the project—just things we’ve seen that we liked, that inspired us, moved us. You may not end up using them, but it gets you started thinking,” says artist Lilit “L i L i t a” Hayrapetyan. One major thing the team considered in the early stages was lighting. “We actually started with black and white photography,” she continues. “We wanted the lighting to be super dramatic to match the story, so we decided on a lot of contrast, a lot of backlighting.” Of course, there’s more to a visual style than just sharp contrasts in lighting. It was important to the team that the visuals didn’t just dramatize the tragedy of Annie’s origin, but matched who she was as a character: an imaginative child. Early exploration kept coming back to fluid, slightly surreal visuals and clouded, shifting forms—a kind of constant fog mixing memory, imagination, and reality. But what would a world woven from the mind and magic of an eight-year-old girl actually look like? ;Lucid dreaming They found it in a dream. Well—not their dream, but Annie’s. “Originally, we had the idea that there would be the main story, and then a dream sequence, or a flashback in memory,” says artist Ke “Keboom” Swaab. One particular drawing of Annie and her sister running through that dreamy landscape, a cross between an impressionist painting and stylized graphic design, captured the team’s imagination (another version of the scene made it into the League artbook). “We could establish a unique style for memory, and different style for reality,” says Keboom. But as the team continued to explore the two visual styles, the conversation shifted to combining them into one unified aesthetic for the whole animation. Keboom tried her hand at another piece of concept art to capture what that might look like. The painting embodied everything they had been exploring. The team was in love. But when it came to its viability as a style for a full animation, they had their doubts. “It’s very idealistic,” says Keboom. Incorporating both the aesthetic of the dream sequence—with its graphic, vibrant, and childlike lines—and the more photorealistic, carefully lighted reality of earlier explorations would be extremely tricky, if not totally impractical. There was also the small problem of the team itself. It was unrealistic to think they could hand-paint every frame in this style—a task that would take hundreds of trained illustrators/animators—with a single-digit team that included exactly zero. “But we just loved the painterly, watercolor look,” says L i L i t a. They weren’t ready to give up just yet. If the team wanted to make the mograph appear hand-painted with only a few hands to do it, they would have to work a little magic of their own—to create something that looked like a painting, but moved like an animation. ;Pyrotechnics and Fairy-tale fire “We needed to know how to make paint move, and we needed to know how to make fire, paint,” says RiotPastaBomb. “I started by going to YouTube and picked a few fires,” says artist Jose “Come2Papa” Martin. He passed them through a filter in Adobe After Effects, trying various combinations of frame rate and brush sizes until the flickering flames began to (very roughly) approximate the look of paint. Come2Papa continued to experiment with filtering to confirm how closely he could produce the particular style the team had come to refer to as “painterly.” It ended up working great—for about 80% of a given scene. What the filter couldn’t do was replicate that last 20%: the precise brushstrokes of a real artist and the key to making it look truly hand-painted. “It can only apply the ‘brushstrokes’ arbitrarily,” explains L i L i t a. The filter reduced the total amount of manual labor required, but it would still be necessary to incorporate a step where the artists manually directed the motion on-screen rather than leave it random. And some sequences would require more than just direction. While it was easy enough to pass a sourced video of rushing water through the filter and get a good foundation for a river environment, more specific sequences—like a burst of flame in the palm of a hand—required full 3D simulation before ever using the filter to render it in the 2D, painterly style. The team’s solution was to develop a hybrid 2D/3D process, and with it, a new take on Annie’s pyrokinesis. The newfound process was producing fantastic results when working with fire. Now it was time to test a full scene. First, the team created an environment made from a composite image of still photographs. Then they added an illustration of Annie, color-corrected, and used the custom filter to produce the hand-painted, fairy-tale look. Finally, they manually added small touches to make it feel more three-dimensional: a combination of bigger and smaller brushes for the textures, shading and lighting. It looked something like this: “This test gave us confidence that we could achieve the style we wanted in the end, even with a team of only five people,” says RiotPastaBomb But when it came to facial animation—critical for Annie to give an emotional and realistic “performance”—the team struggled hard. ;The Devil's in the details “First we tried motion capture, using those capture points to animate a 2D face,” says RiotPastaBomb. Just as the filter was developed to make up for a lack of illustrators, motion capture would allow the team to animate without animators—or a third dimension. If the team could mirror (or at least mimic) muscles, they could work entirely in 2D. But it just didn’t look life-life, and in some cases, it was downright weird. “Then we thought, maybe partial 3D?” says RiotPastaBomb. They tried mapping the 2D texture to a 3D “mannequin face,” keeping the animation mostly 2D, but venturing into 3D for key moments that required it. But that had its own issues. “It was so freaking difficult just to turn Annie’s face without it looking weird,” says RiotPastaBomb. “We’re talking five different assets. But, silver lining: We figured out how to do hair—which normally is very tricky in 3D—entirely as 2D assets, all done with distortion in After Effects.” Another silver lining: Annie’s dress ended up working like that as well. The problem was that it was incredibly difficult to always animate Annie’s face the same way. “Because it wasn’t a true 3D model, where you have a single, actual geometry that will always be that way, every angle and every shift in lighting changed how things looked,” RiotPastaBomb explains. It was impossible to know how Annie should look from every viewpoint. The team was torn. 3D would make everything “perfect” and establish consistency in the animation. But paint by nature is not a perfectly consistent medium; to look hand-painted, it would need to look somewhat imperfect. In the end, the team decided on a mix of everything they had explored so far: 3D to achieve the initial consistency in animation, and 2D to capture the nuances of a painted image. The custom filter to produce a painterly foundation, and painting and shading by hand for the final details. A perfectly imperfect blend of the real and the fantastic—and one that was unmistakably made for Annie. It’s taken months of exploration and a full year of storyboarding, 3D modeling, 2D texturing, filtering, cel shading, hand-painting, and animating to bring Annie’s origin to life. The tech has come a long way from login screens and the team has finished an animation that was as much a personal journey as an experiment in motion graphics. But for Annie, it’s just her beginning. For an extended inside look at the team’s process in action, check out the behind the scenes video. Media Music= ;Related Music LoL Login theme - Chinese - 2015 - Sweetheart Annie| |-|Videos= ;Related Videos A Twist of Fate Cinematic - League of Legends| League of Legends Cinematic A Twist of Fate - Behind the Scenes| Together We’re Unstoppable Super Galaxy 2017 Skins Trailer - League of Legends| VFX Folio Super Galaxy Annie| ANNIE Origins Teaser| ANNIE Origins Behind the Scenes League of Legends| |-|Gallery= Annie Concept 01.jpg|Annie Concept 1 (by Riot Artist Augie Pagan) Annie Concept 02.png|Annie Concept 2 (by Riot Artist Augie Pagan) Annie Concept 03.jpg|Annie Concept 3 Annie Concept 04.png|Annie Concept 4 Annie Concept 05.png|Annie Concept 5 (by Riot Artist Albert Carranza) Annie Model 01.jpg|Annie Model Annie Frostfire Splash Concept 01.jpg|Frostfire Annie Splash Concept (by Riot Artist Kienan 'Knockwurst' Lafferty) Annie Reverse Promo.jpg|Reverse Annie Promo Annie Update Model 01.jpg|Annie Update Model Annie Poro.jpg|Annie Poro Promo Annie ATwistofFate Promo.png|Annie "A Twist of Fate" Promo (by Riot Artist David Rapoza) Annie ATwistofFate Concept 01.jpg|Annie "A Twist of Fate" Concept (by Riot Artist Jonboy Meyers) Annie ATwistofFate Model 01.jpg|Annie "A Twist of Fate" Model 1 (by Riot Artist James Ku) Annie ATwistofFate Model 02.jpg|Annie "A Twist of Fate" Model 2 (by Riot Artist James Ku) Annie ATwistofFate Model 03.jpg|Annie "A Twist of Fate" Model 3 (by Riot Artist James Ku) Annie ATwistofFate Model 04.jpg|Annie "A Twist of Fate" Model 4 (by Riot Artist James Ku) Annie ATwistofFate Model 05.jpg|Annie "A Twist of Fate" Model 5 (by Riot Artist James Ku) Annie Statue Promo 01.jpg|Annie Statue Promo 1 Annie Statue Promo 02.jpg|Annie Statue Promo 2 Annie Statue Promo 03.jpg|Annie Statue Promo 3 Ironstylus Anniesketch.jpg|Annie Sketch (by Riot Artist Michael 'IronStylus' Maurino) Annie Origins concept 01.jpg|Annie "Origins" Concept 1 (by Riot Artist Seung 'kse' Eun Kim) Annie Origins concept 02.jpg|Annie "Origins" Concept 2 (by Riot Artist Seung 'kse' Eun Kim) Annie Origins concept 33.jpg|Annie "Origins" Concept 3 (by Riot Artist Seung 'kse' Eun Kim) Annie Origins concept 03.png|Annie "Origins" Concept 4 Annie Origins concept 04.gif|Annie "Origins" Concept 5 Annie Origins concept 04.jpg|Annie "Origins" Concept 6 Annie Origins concept 06.gif|Annie "Origins" Concept 7 Annie Origins concept 07.gif|Annie "Origins" Concept 8 Annie Origins concept 40.jpg|Annie "Origins" Concept 9 (by Riot Artist Jungah Lee) Annie Origins concept 41.jpg|Annie "Origins" Concept 10 (by Riot Artist Jungah Lee) Annie Origins concept 42.jpg|Annie "Origins" Concept 11 (by Riot Artist Jungah Lee) Annie Origins concept 43.jpg|Annie "Origins" Concept 12 (by Riot Artist Jungah Lee) Annie Origins concept 44.jpg|Annie "Origins" Concept 13 (by Riot Artist Jungah Lee) Annie Origins concept 08.jpg|Annie "Origins" Concept 14 (by Riot Artist Jungah Lee) Annie Origins concept 09.jpg|Annie "Origins" Concept 15 (by Riot Artist Jungah Lee) Annie Origins concept 10.jpg|Annie "Origins" Concept 16 (by Riot Artist Gabriel Yeganyan) Annie Origins concept 34.jpg|Annie "Origins" Concept 17 (by Riot Artist Gabriel Yeganyan) Annie Origins concept 35.jpg|Annie "Origins" Concept 18 (by Riot Artist Gabriel Yeganyan) Annie Origins concept 36.jpg|Annie "Origins" Concept 19 (by Riot Artist Gabriel Yeganyan) Annie Origins concept 48.jpg|Annie "Origins" Concept 20 (by Riot Artist Seung 'kse' Eun Kim) Annie Origins concept 47.jpg|Annie "Origins" concept 21 (by Riot Artist Seung 'kse' Eun Kim) Annie Origins concept 11.jpg|Annie "Origins" Concept 22 Annie Origins concept 12.jpg|Annie "Origins" Concept 23 Annie Origins concept 13.jpg|Annie "Origins" Concept 24 Annie Origins concept 14.jpg|Annie "Origins" Concept 25 Annie Origins concept 15.png|Annie "Origins" Concept 26 Annie Origins concept 45.jpg|Annie "Origins" concept 27 (by Riot Artist Seung 'kse' Eun Kim) Annie Origins concept 16.gif|Annie "Origins" Concept 28 Annie Origins concept 17.jpg|Annie "Origins" Concept 29 Annie Origins concept 18.jpg|Annie "Origins" Concept 30 Annie Origins concept 19.png|Annie "Origins" Concept 31 Annie Origins concept 20.jpg|Annie "Origins" Concept 32 Annie Origins concept 21.jpg|Annie "Origins" Concept 33 (by Riot Artist Seung 'kse' Eun Kim) Annie Origins concept 37.jpg|Annie "Origins" Concept 34 (by Riot Artist Seung 'kse' Eun Kim) Annie Origins concept 38.jpg|Annie "Origins" Concept 35 (by Riot Artist Seung 'kse' Eun Kim) Annie Origins concept 22.jpg|Annie "Origins" Concept 36 Annie Origins concept 23.jpg|Annie "Origins" Concept 37 Annie Origins concept 46.jpg|Annie "Origins" concept 38 (by Riot Artist Seung 'kse' Eun Kim) Annie Origins concept 24.jpg|Annie "Origins" Concept 39 Annie Origins concept 25.png|Annie "Origins" Concept 30 Annie Origins concept 26.jpg|Annie "Origins" Concept 41 Annie Origins concept 39.jpg|Annie "Origins" Concept 42 (by Riot Artist Seung 'kse' Eun Kim) Annie Origins concept 27.jpg|Annie "Origins" Concept 43 Annie Origins concept 28.png|Annie "Origins" Concept 44 Annie Origins concept 29.jpg|Annie "Origins" Concept 45 Annie Origins concept 30.gif|Annie "Origins" Concept 46 Annie Origins concept 31.jpg|Annie "Origins" Concept 47 Annie Origins concept 32.jpg|Annie "Origins" Concept 48 Annie Origins Concept 49.jpg|Annie "Origins" Concept 49 (by Riot Artist Seung 'kse' Eun Kim) Annie Update Goth Splash concept.jpg|Goth Annie Splash Update Concept (by Riot Artist Sperasoft Studio) Annie Update Wonderland Model 01.jpg|Annie in Wonderland Update Model 1 (by Riot Artist Hector Moran) Annie Update Wonderland Model 02.jpg|Annie in Wonderland Update Model 2 (by Riot Artist Hector Moran) Annie Update Wonderland Model 03.jpg|Annie in Wonderland Update Model 3 (by Riot Artist Hector Moran) Annie Update RedRiding Model 01.jpg|Red Riding Annie Update Model 1 (by Riot Artist Hector Moran) Annie Update RedRiding Model 02.jpg|Red Riding Annie Update Model 2 (by Riot Artist Hector Moran) Annie Update RedRiding Model 03.jpg|Red Riding Annie Update Model 3 (by Riot Artist Hector Moran) Annie Update PromQueen Model 01.jpg|Prom Queen Annie Update Model 1 (by Riot Artist Hector Moran) Annie Update PromQueen Model 02.jpg|Prom Queen Annie Update Model 2 (by Riot Artist Hector Moran) Annie Update PromQueen Model 03.jpg|Prom Queen Annie Update Model 3 (by Riot Artist Hector Moran) Annie Panda Concept 01.jpg|Panda Annie Concept 1 (by Riot Artist Avery Coleman) Annie Panda Concept 02.jpg|Panda Annie Concept 2 (by Riot Artist Avery Coleman) Annie Panda Model 01.jpg|Panda Annie Model 1 (by Riot Artist Maddy 'MissMaddy' Taylor Kenyon) Annie Panda Model 02.jpg|Panda Annie Model 2 (by Riot Artist Maddy 'MissMaddy' Taylor Kenyon) Annie Panda Model 03.jpg|Panda Annie Model 3 (by Riot Artist Maddy 'MissMaddy' Taylor Kenyon) Annie Panda Model 04.jpg|Panda Annie Model 4 By Riot Artist (by Riot Artist Maddy 'MissMaddy' Taylor Kenyon) Lunar Revel Statue model 01.jpg|Lunar Revel Statue Model 1 (by Riot Artists DragonFly Studio) Lunar Revel Statue model 02.jpg|Lunar Revel Statue Model 2 (by Riot Artists DragonFly Studio) Valentines Day 2015 card 1.jpg|Sweetheart Annie Valentines Day 2015 Card Promo 1 (by Riot Contracted Artist Oskar Vega) Valentines Day 2015 blank card 1.jpg|Sweetheart Annie Valentines Day 2015 Card Promo 2 (by Riot Contracted Artist Oskar Vega) Annie Hextech splash concept 01.jpg|Hextech Annie Splash Concept 1 (by Riot Artist Christian Fell) Annie Hextech splash concept 02.jpg|Hextech Annie Splash Concept 2 (by Riot Artist Christian Fell) Annie Hextech splash concept 03.jpg|Hextech Annie Splash Concept 3 (by Riot Artist Christian Fell) Annie Hextech splash concept 04.jpg|Hextech Annie Splash Concept 4 (by Riot Artist Christian Fell) Annie SuperGalaxy Concept 01.jpg|Super Galaxy Annie Concept 1 (by Riot Artist Baldi Konijn) Annie SuperGalaxy Concept 02.jpg|Super Galaxy Annie Concept 2 (by Riot Artist Baldi Konijn) 2017 SuperGalaxy concept 01.jpg|2017 Super Galaxy Skins Concept (by Riot Artist Paul 'Zeronis' Kwon) Annie SuperGalaxy model 01.jpg|Super Galaxy Annie Model (by Riot Artists DragonFly Studio) |-|Summoner Icons= Champie Annie profileicon.png|Champie Annie Ashes, Ashes profileicon.png|Ashes, Ashes Original Tibbers profileicon.png|Original Tibbers Annie Poro Icon.png|Annie Poro Sweetheart Tibbers profileicon.png|Sweetheart Tibbers Super Galaxy Annie profileicon.png|Super Galaxy Annie Annie-Versary Border profileicon.png|Annie-Versary Border 10th Anniversary Summoner profileicon.png|10th Anniversary Summoner |-|Ward Skins= 10th Anniversary Ward.png|10th Anniversary |-|Emotes= Fired Up Emote.png|Fired Up LoL Facebook Icon 05.gif|Annie (Facebook) Category:Champion development Category:Annie